Wednesday

(I never know what day it is anymore.)  I can feel the tension from other peoples' fear and anger fill my body until I'm about to break.  I let it get to me, I should have tuned it out.  I had to go.  Out.  Walk.  Get it out of my system.  First thought was the frogs, then the herons.  On the way, I pass through the crab apple grove, in bloom.  If I could be in love with a tree, it would be a crab apple in bloom.  Lovely.  The roses are still asleep, dreaming of summer.  One heron flies over, lands on the upmost branches of the rookery.  Lots of nests, but quiet today.  The frogs are in hiding, one eventually shows its face, crawling briefly up from the harbor of the leaf it's in.  The greenhouse is warm and smells sweet.  There is a cacao plant with fruit in one of the rooms, but I'm not sure if that's the scent.  The greenhouse is very peaceful.

Outside the sky spits rain on my face and the wind buffets me, an indecisive storm.  Wood ducks swim and dive in the fountain as I walk past.  Made some preliminary decisions regarding one of the class projects which makes me feel less stressed, and a rehearsal for the other one tonight has been set.  I called a housing authority this morning about an apartment, $1020 for a studio.  Yikes.  And then applied for an acting job that pays, so keeping my fingers crossed.  Spoke to a man about a house, I'm not sure if the rooms are a good fit, but his voice was very calming.  One way or another, something will be decided in two weeks.

Here's a Walt Whitman poem:

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
     the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
     with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer  
     forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so  
     quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
     the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
     the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

- Walt Whitman

Someone else's poem

Here's a Robert Bly poem for the ending of the day, which has yet to arrive, stretching out further and further each day now:

Surprised by Evening

There is unknown dust that is near us,
Waves breaking on shores just over the hill,
Trees full of birds that we have never seen,
Nets drawn down with dark fish.

The evening arrives; we look up and it is there,
It has come through the nets of the stars,
Through the tissues of the grass,
Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.

The day shall never end, we think:
We have hair that seems born for the daylight;
But, at last, the quiet waters of the night will rise,
And our skin shall see far off, as it does underwater.

Friday

My mind has been a blank canvas most of the week.  I had a couple of epiphanies a few nights ago when I couldn't sleep, one was new, the other I'd heard before but it suddenly made sense to me (had to do with loving yourself, and why that would matter), but other than that, thoughts slip through with no resistance to keep them from vaporizing in the light of the sun.  I have no attention span, and no feeling of urgency that would seem necessary to get through all the work I need to get done and to find a place to live.  Time to make a list and check it off I guess, to feel like I'm accomplishing something.  Got another play mostly read, that's something, and a really long choir rehearsal last night...think I need to get my ears cleaned out, had trouble matching a b-flat, not sure why I can't hear it.  I've been defaulted into singing second lately, (back to first in the other choir) and that's always been a challenge.  I'd rather sing first, I can hit the notes, but we're suddenly short on sopranos.  It's a good workout for my brain, especially when it's in a fog.

But the sun is shining, and it's Friday, and someone carried my (massive stack of) mail when I wasn't looking.  And the bird continues to sing outside my window in the morning, returning after I don't know how long an absence:  I like it.  Life is good.  (I like Keats as well):

When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

   That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 

-John Keats

Morning

Enduring a morning full of lovely tar fumes.  But the sun is out and a slight breeze blows through the trees.  Lawnmowers roar in the distance.

Plowing my way through more plays: Lee Blessing, Neil LaBute, Jean Genet.  Still trying to figure out the tape recorder thing, I'll just have to do without, I think.  I think I know what my "do-over" is though...seems to be providing plenty of fuel for class this year.  Didn't realize how much it bothered me, but when I touch it, it's loaded. Totally buried it to be a "good" person, but he wasn't.  It was a long time ago, if I can get it out of my system, that'd be a good thing.  Trying to work myself up to making phone calls (least favorite thing to do.)  All for class (oh, and potential house.)  So much work this quarter.

This is a Maya Angelou poem, a friend posted it a couple of days ago, and it grabbed me.

Refusal

Beloved,

In what other lives or lands

Have I known your lips

Your Hands

Your Laughter brave

Irreverent.

Those sweet excesses that

I do adore.

What surety is there

That we will meet again,

On other worlds some

Future time undated.

I defy my body's haste.

Without the promise

Of one more sweet encounter

I will not deign to die.      

 

Maya Angelou

Wednesday

While I was looking elsewhere, the trees near the entrance to the building became covered in leaves.  They cast a green glow in the rising morning light as I pass by them.

In class last night, talked about "conflict" and the idea that we know we are going to lose in the end, we know we will die, but we choose to fight for things anyway.  We choose to pursue love anyway.  It's what makes us interesting.  It's what makes us brave.

Here's a poem for the day (I'm on a Neruda kick):

Sonnet XVII: I do not love you as if you were brine-rose, topaz

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

 

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

 

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda 

Trust

Way too scattered.  Feel like I'm running in one direction, chipping away at something, then running off in a different one and chipping away at that.  It's exciting to be in a place where anything is possible, but exhausting to not be able to stand on anything solid until things settle.  It's like being in the middle of a whirlwind (or being the wind), I don't know what direction to go in, I don't know direction.  All that remains is trust, and a belief that the world is "safe."

Happy that we're mostly back to a regular class schedule, it helps me feel grounded, and that the work is progressing, and not in a vacuum.  I need the interaction, the connection, the feedback.  And the accountability, there's so much going on, if I don't have to focus on something, I won't, and I need to.

I am by no means in despair, actually feeling rather upbeat, but I like this poem by Wendell Berry (and as it's National Poetry Month):

"THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS"
by Wendell Berry

 

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

After class, stressed out again: so much to get done, so little time, such a lack of clarity in my head...so, head feels like it's screaming.  First things first...choose an event, buy a tape, record the exercise.  Shit. Oh, and I still haven't done the empathy exercise.